To most, an extended period of idleness and languor is unproductive.
This may very well be the case.
But it can also be false.
Any creative knows this.
I have even stared at the wall and gotten admonished for it.
“What are you doing?!”
“I’m writing,” I say – as I mentally disappear back into my thoughts.
May I – may we – always have more time for this.
“Idleness as a waste of time is a damaging notion put about by its spiritually vacant enemies. The fact that idling can be enormously productive is repressed. Musicians are characterized as slackers; writers as selfish ingrates; artists as dangerous. Robert Louis Stevenson expressed the paradox as follows in “An Apology for Idlers” (1885): “Idleness . . . does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class.” Long periods of languor, indolence and staring at the ceiling are needed by any creative person in order to develop ideas.”
–Tom Hodgkinson, How To Be Idle
